Applique is my Passion

My first experiments with ponchos I am wondering if I need to add a button at the wrist. My goal is to make the colors blend like watercolor paintings. I've been hand dying jacket weight wool fabrics for a few years now.  I use them in my needle felted appliqued quilts.  But I've had the urge to expand into ponchos and other simple jacket shapes.  Maybe there also needs to be an appliqued animal or two.

How many of you think beading is tedious?  This bug shape is from our Beetles pattern  I punch needled the blue and green threads to a piece of white cotton, and then added the beads and then appliqued it onto the sleeve of a white wool jacket.  The hairy legs are small bugle beads.  I made this around 2006 when I was testing out alternative techniques to applique.  I eventually gave up punch needle because my left wrist started to hurt, holding the hoop that held the cotton taut.  I own a Morgan hoop now, but the other issue was that it just took too long to see a finished result.  Needle Felted Applique goes faster, filling in an area. I started doing needle felted applique in 2007 when I found the tool that I use now: Clovers pink felting tool with three needles.  My first felted quilt/pattern was the Crazy Sheep . and it was started as  machine applique quilt and grew into felting and there are even some beads on the quilt in the centers of the flowers in the crazy quilting.

One of my customers is getting paralyzed with starting...spending a lot of time collecting fabrics, rovings instead of diving in on her project.  Here is what I shared with her to get her off the dime: You just need to get started and work a little bit every day.  If something doesn't work, it isn't failure, it is a learning experience.  Felting is quite easy to change.  You can cut areas away, pull off the felting, cover up something you don't like and don't forget, the most important guide: it doesn't have to be PERFECT!!  Art is a progression.  I am never satisfied, I could always do it better...The NEXT piece will be better,  but you have to get over fussing and actually DO something today.  or you will never get to being better tomorrow.

I was bitten by a tick on Thursday last week.  He embedded his head really well into my chest.  I used a tick twister, which looks like a green plastic mini-crowbar, but I couldn't get it under the tick.  I ended up using a tweezer but the body broke in two, leaving the head stuck in my skin.  I learned that tick have reverse barbs on the heads, making it difficult to remove.  I had a friend who got a tick bite as a kid and the skin grew over the tick part.  This later gave her some health issues.  So I knew I needed to have the head removed but where should I go? I called my family doctor's office and a P.A. called me back and agreed with me to have it removed at an Urgent Care facility.  So I went to the internet expecting to find one close to me.  I couldn't find any.  I finally called the local hospital and was directed to their "Express Care", which was the same location where I had gone for a cat bite, four years ago.  only the name had changed.  From the t

I just finished quilting this quilt top.  I was crunched for time because I needed send the quilt off so I could enter it in the 2017 Mountain Quiltfest in Pigeon Forge TN.  There is no chance to win any prize money since they have a clause that disqualifies me because I am a pattern designer.  When I get the quilt back, I will quilt some more on the borders.  The name of the quilt is Another Flock, because it is loosely based on my New Flock of Sheep pattern.  

Birds in Wool, the pattern will be available January 30, 2017 at Critter Pattern Works  Exploring feather stitch..to attach a leaf shape to the background or,  draw the shapes of feathers,  double feather stitch over the the background overlapped joins  different lengths on the arms of the feather stitches. Feather stitching with fly stitches and lazy daisy stitches on the arms. Herringbone stitches and do-dads attached to the x's.